NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 4 The First Crops — THINK ABOUT IT

Book page 72 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Both in the earlier picture of a rock shelter and in this one, men and women are given certain roles. While they may appear to be ‘natural’, they are not necessarily accurate and do not cover all situations. For instance, in a rock shelter, women may have helped prepare colours for painting the rock or may have done some of the painting. In both scenes, men may have done some of the cooking or may have helped take care of children.

Answer

The book is warning us about the pictures in its own pages — which is unusual and worth taking seriously. The illustrations are modern guesses, not evidence.

What the two pictures show: men hunting, making tools, painting the rock, carrying the harvest and building; women grinding grain, cooking and minding children. What the evidence actually allows: far more than that.

The picture suggests	Why it may not be accurate
Only men painted the rock walls	Nothing in a painting says who held the brush. At several painted caves in the world, hand stencils on the walls have been measured and many are the size and shape of women's and children's hands. Women may also have prepared the colours, which is half the work.
Only women cooked and cared for children	In a band where everybody must eat, whoever is in camp cooks. Men very likely cooked, minded children and carried infants too.
Only men hunted, only women gathered	Gathering plants, fruits, roots, honey, eggs and small animals supplied a great deal of the food and was done by everyone. Women in many known hunting-gathering communities hunt small game and fish.
Only men made tools and built houses	Tool-making and house-building are learnt skills; children in the picture are already copying the adults. There is no reason to assume the learning stopped at boys.

Why an artist ends up drawing it this way: nobody photographed the Stone Age. An illustrator has to fill the gaps with something, and the easiest thing to reach for is the pattern he or she already knows from today. That is how a modern assumption gets painted onto a 12,000-year-old scene — and then read back as if it were proof.

Q2.

Keeping in mind that we have only limited information, think about such roles and situations, and discuss in class.

Answer

How to run this discussion so that it goes somewhere. Split the class in two and give each side a job:

Side A — “What do we actually know?” List only what physical evidence can show: the tools, the paintings, the grinding stones, the animal bones, the burials. Notice how few of these come with a label saying who used them.
Side B — “What have we assumed?” Go through the two pictures and list every role that has been assigned rather than proved.
Then swap lists and argue. The useful question is never “were women hunters?” but “what evidence would settle it either way?”

Three points worth landing on:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have no proof that women painted at Bhimbetka; we have no proof that they did not.
Survival bias. Stone survives, cloth and wood do not — so work done in stone looks more important than it was, and whoever wove, cooked or nursed leaves almost no trace.
Roles were probably flexible. In a small band facing hunger, cold and danger, rigid job lists are a luxury. Everyone did what was needed — which is exactly why the book says these roles “do not cover all situations”.

Sample conclusion for your notebook: “Our class agreed that the pictures are a reasonable guess but not proof. We can be confident that people lived in groups, used fire, made tools and painted, because those things survive. We cannot be confident about who did each job, because the evidence does not record it. So we should read such pictures as an artist's suggestion, and keep an open mind.”

Why this is a history lesson and not just a fairness lesson: the habit being taught here — separate what the evidence shows from what the illustrator assumed — is the same habit you will need for every source in the rest of the book, from a king's inscription praising himself to a foreign traveller's account of a city he barely saw.

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